![]() There’s even an index in case you need to find the section on King Lear quickly next time you need to brush up on your Shakespeare. Beaton’s enthusiasm for her esoteric subject matter is matched by her skewed wit and breadth of knowledge. The comments and art combined make this book feel like a goofy bull session with a very creative friend. A Vagrant embrace the perennially unhip topics of science, history, and classic literature, and make them not only accessible, but also screamingly hilarious. Beaton’s style is rough and immediate, the kind where you think, “oh, I could do that” until you actually sit down and try, then you recognize how much imagination and practice it takes. When they’re not telling us more about the comic’s inspirations, they’re making more jokes. There’s also an angry Wonder Woman and a crazy Aquaman and a sexy Batman and an insane Nancy Drew, in case you want some more recent allusions and re-interpretations.īest of all are the author’s comments under many of the comics. Beaton’s modern perspective puts Macbeth and Edgar Allan Poe and Andrew Jackson and Jane Eyre and romance in general in fresh new light that also makes many of these well-known elements more memorable. After all, this is a book where the Bronte sisters scope out brooding jerk dudes and suffragettes are re-envisioned through the lens of Sex and the City and Watson complains about being treated as comic relief to Holmes. Perhaps that’s a bit much to put on a volume of hilarious popular culture and history mashups. Not only is Hark! A Vagrant an entertaining read, it’s also an excellent example of how much the comic industry has changed and how varied the paths to success are these days. But it is, and congratulations to Beaton for so wonderfully doing her own thing. If you’d told me that a collection of comic strips based on literature and history, drawn in a pen-and-ink style more reminiscent of mid-last-century editorial cartooning than other popular webcomics, would be one of the hottest books of the year, both popularly and critically, I never would have believed you. I am impressed, though, that something so distinctively unique has caught on so widely. We’ll sit her between Nick and Brooke and just let it go from there.I wasn’t going to bother reviewing Hark! A Vagrant, because really, how many people do you need to tell you that Kate Beaton’s comics are hilarious as well as informative? He’d have to get in line behind Richard III though, whom I have heard (from certain Elizabethan sources) was an ugly hunchbacked troll. They say the real Macbeth was a pretty decent fellow and a good ruler, and he’d probably have a bone to pick with Shakespeare over character assassination. MacDonald, the Tudors or Kokoro (you may have to look that one up, but I’m really hoping you don’t. I actually laughed out loud at times reading Beaton’s two books.Īt the bottom of each series of strips, there’s a bit of her thoughts on say, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir John A. The books derive from her popular website that is well worth killing an hour or two at while at work. ![]() There is so much funny in this that I’ll leave it to you readers to post them in the comments below. ![]() There is not too much of the Bard in either book, but there is a rad one on MacBeth that I really liked.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |